|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 61
"How, dear madam? And why so?" said Lucan simply.
But before the baroness had time to explain, admitting that such was her
intention, Julia was taken with another fancy.
"Really," she said, "I am smothering here. Monsieur de Lucan, do offer me
your arm."
She went out, and Lucan followed her. She stopped in the vestibule to
cover her head with her great white vail, seemed to hesitate between the
door that led into the garden and that which led into the yard, and then
deciding:
"To the Ladies' Walk," she said; "it's coolest there."
"The Ladies' Walk," which was Julia's favorite strolling resort, opened
opposite the avenue, on the other side of the court-yard. It was a gently
sloping path contrived between the rocky base of the wooded hill and the
banks of a ravine that seemed to have been one of the moats of the old
castle. A brook flowed at the bottom of this ravine with a melancholy
murmur; it became merged, a little farther off, into a small lake shaded
by willows, and guarded by two old marble nymphs, to which the Ladies'
Walk was indebted for its name, consecrated by the local tradition.
Half-way between the yard and the pond, fragments of wall and broken
arches, the evident remnants of some outer fortification, rose against the
hill-side; for the space of a few paces, these ruins bordered the path
with their heavy buttresses, and projected into it, together with festoons
of ivy and briar, a mass of shade which night changed into densest
darkness. It looked then as if the passage was broken by an abyss. The
gloomy character of this site was not, however, without some mitigating
features; the path was strewn with fine, dry sand; rustic benches stood
against the bluff; finally, the grassy banks that sloped down into the
ravine were dotted with hyacinths, violets, and dwarf roses whose perfume
rose and lingered in that shaded alley like the odor of incense in a
church.
It was then about the end of July, and the heat had been overpowering
during the day. After leaving the atmosphere of the court-yard, still
aglow with the fires of the setting sun, Julia breathed eagerly the cool
air of the woods and of the brook.
"Dieu! how delightful this is!" she said.
"But I am afraid this may be a little too delightful," said Lucan; "allow
me."
And he wound up in a double fold round her neck the floating ends of her
vail.
"What! do you value my life, then?" she said.
"Most undoubtedly."
"That's magnanimous!"
She walked a few steps in silence, resting lightly upon the arm of her
companion, and rocking, in her peculiar way, her graceful figure.
"Your good cure must take me for a species of demon," she added.
"He is not the only one," said Lucan, with ironical coldness.
She laughed a short and constrained laugh; then, after another pause, and
while continuing to walk with downcast eyes:
"You must certainly hate me a little less now; say, don't you?"
"A little less."
"Be serious, will you? I know that I have made you suffer a great deal.
Are you beginning to forgive me now?"
Her voice had assumed an accent of tenderness quite unusual to it, and
which touched Monsieur de Lucan.
"I forgive you with all my heart, my child," he replied.
She stopped, and grasping his two hands:
"True? We will not hate each other any more?" she said, in a low and
apparently timid tone. "You love me a little?"
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|